The images and footage of the violence are both disturbing and unsurprising. They exist largely because of the ubiquitousness of smartphones and digital cameras that put the power of social media in the hands of every day people. (I write this without irony, as I'll explain later.) That alone calls into question the wisdom of police actions, given the high likelihood that the actions will be recorded and the actors identified. (The pepper spray incident in New York is one example, as activists quickly identified the officer who wielded the pepper spray.)

In the most shocking cases, the protesters' only transgression appears to have been dissent. The women pepper sprayed in New York were merely complaining about the police tactics in moving the protesters away from buildings. Others have been arrested for merely talking to police officers. The brutality of the police actions are, in some ways, matched by officers apparent ammusement and the glee with which conservatives have responded to them. As with gay soldiers in Iraq, veterans of our most recent wars are not spared, as conservatives accuse the veteran who confronted NYPD officers about the violence used against unarmed protesters of "hiding behind his service to his country," and "blamed the victim" in comments on the YouTube video of two-time Iraq war vertan Scott Olson being shot in the head with a projectile by Oakland police, while taking part in a peaceful protest and provoking no one.

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.

That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.

The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.

Recent polls and surveys show that efforts on the right and in the media to portray the Occupy protesters as "mobs" of "dirty hippies" who "don't know what they're protesting," are not having the desired effect on rest of the population. They have not muted the message of the protests or blurred economic realities that have inspired the movement and its message.

A fellow Marines explained what motivated Scott Olsen's participation in the Occupy movement: “Scott was marching with the 99 percent because he felt corporations and banks had too much control over our government, and that they weren’t being held accountable for their role in the economic downturn, which caused so many people to lose their jobs and their homes.”

The movement is opposed to deregulated, free market capitalism. Short of Ron Paul disciples and Ayn Rand cultists, no reasonable American wants a system in which Enron, Goldman Sachs, AIG or BP can commit heinous crimes and not pay the price. According to Gallup, 68 percent of Americans want corporations to have less influence in America. That doesn't mean a supermajority of Americans are anti-corporation, it simply means that a supermajority of Americans agree that corporations have acquired too much power and therefore ought to be reined in. Not banished or banned, just watched more closely.

The OWS movement, like the American people, isn't anti-corporate, it's anti-corporate crime.

...Members of the Republican Party and the conservative movement are all about law and order, right? It's remarkable, then, that Dennis Prager and Herman Cain aren't supporting accountability against the corporations that poison our water or exacerbate unemployment or trigger a deep recession.

And that's exactly what OWS is seeking: accountability.

They not "anti-capitalism" or even "anti-capitalist." They are Americans opposed to a capitalism that has operated without conscience or accountability for decades, and outraged that they, their families and their communities have borne the consequences. And this means one of two things: that their concerns must be prioritized and their voices heeded, or they must be more effectively policed.

Terrance Heath is the online producer at Campaign for America's Future. He has consulted on blogging and social media for a number of organizations and agencies. He is a prominent activist on LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues.

The images and footage of the violence are both disturbing and unsurprising. They exist largely because of the ubiquitousness of smartphones and digital cameras that put the power of social media in the hands of every day people. (I write this without irony, as I'll explain later.) That alone calls into question the wisdom of police actions, given the high likelihood that the actions will be recorded and the actors identified. (The pepper spray incident in New York is one example, as activists quickly identified the officer who wielded the pepper spray.)

In the most shocking cases, the protesters' only transgression appears to have been dissent. The women pepper sprayed in New York were merely complaining about the police tactics in moving the protesters away from buildings. Others have been arrested for merely talking to police officers. The brutality of the police actions are, in some ways, matched by officers apparent ammusement and the glee with which conservatives have responded to them. As with gay soldiers in Iraq, veterans of our most recent wars are not spared, as conservatives accuse the veteran who confronted NYPD officers about the violence used against unarmed protesters of "hiding behind his service to his country," and "blamed the victim" in comments on the YouTube video of two-time Iraq war vertan Scott Olson being shot in the head with a projectile by Oakland police, while taking part in a peaceful protest and provoking no one.

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.

That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.

The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.

Recent polls and surveys show that efforts on the right and in the media to portray the Occupy protesters as "mobs" of "dirty hippies" who "don't know what they're protesting," are not having the desired effect on rest of the population. They have not muted the message of the protests or blurred economic realities that have inspired the movement and its message.

A fellow Marines explained what motivated Scott Olsen's participation in the Occupy movement: “Scott was marching with the 99 percent because he felt corporations and banks had too much control over our government, and that they weren’t being held accountable for their role in the economic downturn, which caused so many people to lose their jobs and their homes.”

The movement is opposed to deregulated, free market capitalism. Short of Ron Paul disciples and Ayn Rand cultists, no reasonable American wants a system in which Enron, Goldman Sachs, AIG or BP can commit heinous crimes and not pay the price. According to Gallup, 68 percent of Americans want corporations to have less influence in America. That doesn't mean a supermajority of Americans are anti-corporation, it simply means that a supermajority of Americans agree that corporations have acquired too much power and therefore ought to be reined in. Not banished or banned, just watched more closely.

The OWS movement, like the American people, isn't anti-corporate, it's anti-corporate crime.

...Members of the Republican Party and the conservative movement are all about law and order, right? It's remarkable, then, that Dennis Prager and Herman Cain aren't supporting accountability against the corporations that poison our water or exacerbate unemployment or trigger a deep recession.

And that's exactly what OWS is seeking: accountability.

They not "anti-capitalism" or even "anti-capitalist." They are Americans opposed to a capitalism that has operated without conscience or accountability for decades, and outraged that they, their families and their communities have borne the consequences. And this means one of two things: that their concerns must be prioritized and their voices heeded, or they must be more effectively policed.

Terrance Heath is the online producer at Campaign for America's Future. He has consulted on blogging and social media for a number of organizations and agencies. He is a prominent activist on LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues.